A hectic tour of London's leading chamber music venues on 7th
January confirmed a healthy scene in the Capital at the beginning of the
2001 season.

Blackheath Sundays 2001 drew a practically full house to its first
Sunday morning concert of the season - gratifying for so adventurous a programme.
The Medici Quartet began their three concerts, sensibly spaced out
between now and May, with a workmanlike account of Bartok No.2. Of particular
interest is that in they have scheduled three late examples of Elisabeth
Lutyens' thirteen string quartets, Op.125 (Doubles), 146 &
155.

Paul Robertson, talking (with some circumspect) about Liz Lutyens,
with whom the quartet had worked on these works, told us that for many years
she lived just round the corner in Blackheath Village. He explained that
she made each of these pieces around 11½ mins. long deliberately, 'to
break the barrier into the BBC's next fees bracket'! She felt that she was
never quite the right age for easy acceptance - when a young woman composer,
only the old (men) were revered; when she became old it was the reverse.

The Op 125 quartet, subtitled Rounds, was spare in texture, as was
her way, and heard again now, very attractive and attention-holding. Clearly
Webern-influenced, she passed the fragmentary phrases around the instruments,
and extended the normal palate by tapping on the strings with the bow, and
onto the bodies of the instruments with knuckles. I look forward to refreshing
my memory of this unique and completely individual composer, who never achieved
popular fame, but was always respected, as much for her flamboyant personality
(she loved to shock, said Robertson) as for her rigorous music. Her entertaining
autobiography A Goldfish Bowl (London, 1972) tells how she made her
way by composing a lot of film music whilst bringing up a family. Her use
of 12-note technique seems to have been considered almost morally reprehensible
by some in England in the 1950s, but in the more sympathetic climate of the
following decade Lutyens achieved a greater measure of recognition. She felt
that she was never quite the right age for easy acceptance - when a young
composer (and a woman!), only the old were revered; when she became old it
was the reverse. See David Wright's
profile

The South Place concerts, promoted by the London Chamber Music Society,
have notched up their concert No. 2867in this, the 110th season
of this record series! Admission is a paltry £5, free for children and
students 8-22 and many long-term regulars take up the Season Tickets available.
It was a magnificent opening concert for the year, wholly satisfying for
the coming together of all the important elements. Listening to music in
three of London's most admired halls on the same day confirmed our belief
that the acoustics of Conway Hall (upstairs) are unbeatable.

TheSchubert Ensemble of London is one of the finest groups
to be heard regularly on the chamber music circuit and the present line up
is as good as they've ever been. William Howard is one of my favourite
pianists (less often heard solo, but a Schubert piano sonata in A minor from
him sticks in my memory) and balancing piano (a lovely Bosendorfer here)
with strings has become second nature to this group. No one overdoes their
solo spot, and it is team interaction which sets the style and gives continual
satisfaction.

Hummel's Eb quintet is more compact than many of his works which have
understandably fallen into disfavour (he was eclipsed By Beethoven) and his
pioneering combination of four different strings prompted Schubert to compose
the Trout Quintet, a jewel in this group's crown. (Both can be collected
in a bargain Hyperion dyadwith Schumann
CDD22008.) Dvorak's quartet, also
in Eb, is in his happiest vein and, looking around during the performance,
smiles were visible on the faces of the Conway Hall's regular
patrons.

Edward Rushton's name is new to me. His ingenious L'An Mil
was one of the many commissions by TheSchubert Ensemble of
London is genuine programme music of a type which is rare nowadays
(contemporary music and its programme notes often seem to bear little
relationship to each other). It is inspired by a monk who recorded a dream
of a series of dreadful disasters in 999, but awoke to find that it had all
been in his mind and that it was a beautiful morning with the world still
as it should be! There is real originality in the uncluttered scoring, with
bell sounds - the piano often one-handed, at other times in unison two high
octaves apart - suggestions of plainsong and Machaut in the modal melodies
and conjunct harmony, none of these allusions too literal. Each instrument
is given its opportunity to further the argument. After the graphic
disaster-music, the daybreak is as heart-warming as Ravel's in Daphnis
& Chloe. A composer to seek out; b. 1972, apparently living now in
Switzerland. (see appended footnote)

We attended Freddy Kempf's afternoon Wigmore Hall piano recital
with great expectations, and it was predictably packed to standing for this
prodigy and youngest BBC Young Musician, 'now established as one of the most
sought-after pianists in the world'. (I had enjoyed his
Rachmaninoff
CDon BIS and was interested to hear him live in a demanding,
romantic virtuoso programme.) Pianists are sometimes categorised as being
Liszt players or Chopin players and the two are not that often juxtaposed
as here. Kempf gave a thoughtful and texturally varied performances of the
two major Chopin items, with great sensitivity at times and easy command
of their decorative idiom. But there was a tendency to 'bring out' inner
parts for the sake of it, something different. He was inclined to occasional
over-loud climaxes (e.g. to finish the Ballade), out of scale for
the structure of the music and too for the intimate venue - as if he had
been playing too much Liszt, where flamboyant technical mastery of
prestidigitation and power tends to rule the day.

Indeed he had, I concluded! He got through the whole of the Transcendental
Studies (1851) creditably in these simplified (!) versions of the
Grandes Etudes of 1839, as draining (for this listener) to hear in
extenso as they must be tiring to play; undeniably a great feat of memory
and concentration, and one for the CV. I enjoyed Feux-follets but
found myself so out of sympathy with most of this music that I have nothing
more to add. See Marc Bridle's
Interview with Freddy Kempf

Footnote

Edward Rushton (born 1972)

Edward Rushton studied at King's College, Cambridge and the Royal Scottish
Academy of Music and Drama. His teachers included Robin Holloway and James
MacMillan. He is now based in Zurich as a freelance composer and pianist,
currently holding the post of Composer in Residence there at the
Zentralbibliothek.

Lan mil

Programme Note

It is the night of 31 December, 999. Rudolf Glaber sits alone in his cell
chronicling the portents and catastrophes that herald the millenium: 1000
years after the birth of Christ, when, according to the prophesies of St
John the Apostle, the Antichrist will be let loose to spread destruction
over the face of all mankind and the world will end. He reports comets, an
ominous whale, natural disasters, epidemics, wars, famines and cannibalism,
while the stormy night rages outside, battering on the doors of the monastery.
He writes on, and suddenly it is morning. The sun rises, the birds sing.
The world has not ended. Christendom breathes a sigh of relief.

"It was as if the whole world were shaking itself free, shrugging of the
burden of the past, and cladding itself everywhere in a white mantle of
churches."